A recent
discovery that nicely varnished teak incites uncontrollable passion in human
beings has apparently led to a large-scale movement to cover up all sailboat
brightwork.
The latest
issue of Good Old Boat magazine
features an extensive article explaining how the author sewed Sunbrella covers
for the Dorade boxes on her boat.
Apparently the Dorade boxes on deck, so
lovingly sanded, sealed and varnished by her husand, were made of sexy
teak and needed to be hidden from public view.
You may think it strange that someone would go
to considerable expense, time and trouble to cover up teak that was sealed and
varnished at considerable expense, time and touble with the express intention of
attracting the admiration
of passers by. You may think that if a highly polished teak Dorade box were
to be hidden beneath a boat burka, it might as well be made from third-grade
knotty pine and left unfinished. But you would be wrong.
Apparently
there is something you are missing here.
Perhaps beautiful teak Dorade boxes are creating dangerous passions in
impressionable people. Or perhaps there
is a deeper psychological reason behind the burka movement — perhaps the owners
of covered-up teak have realized that when something is deliberately hidden in
this way, the viewer automatically imagines it to be the most beautiful and
desirable object he or she has never seen.
I myself
have been struck by the sight of a Pacific Seacraft sloop with every bit of
teak woodwork above decks carefully burka-ed.
Whole gunwales were covered with Sunbrella fabric, carefully buttoned
down with dinky little fastenings every few feet. I was not, however, overcome
with a desire to rip it off and feast my eyes. I must admit that what struck me
about it was the waste of time doing the varnishing in the first place, and the
small fortune the canvas shop must have made from all that fancy work.
I must
admit, further, that the meager amounts of well-weathered teak that have
adorned some of the boats I’ve owned were never the objects of excited admiration
from passers by. Rather the opposite. In fact, hiding them from public view
with boat burkas would have been the decent, merciful thing to do. But luckily
for me, boat burkas weren’t in fashion
back then.
Today’s Thought
There is
no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. — Francis Bacon
Tailpiece
“Do you know
a man with one eye called Falconetti?”“Dunno. What’s his other eye called?”
(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)
